~ Jasper ~
At only around five-thirty in the morning, Jasper heard footsteps enter his room. The next thing he knew, he was being shaken by the intruder.
“Jasper, it’s morning. Time to begin.”
He recognized the voice as Lingzhi, the local hermit and his new personal trainer. Though he could make out what he was saying, it seemed far too early for Jasper to wake up. Despite already being conscious, Jasper was having a difficult time staying fully awake at this hour, and was hoping that he could fall back asleep before starting for the day.
“Isn’t it really early?” Jasper groggily asked, “It’s still dark out.”
“Well, you’ll need to get used to this, young man. You won’t always have the luxury of waking up when you want to in the real world,” Lingzhi lectured.
Jasper slowly swung his legs off his bed, moving to an upright position.
“Well, I guess I don’t have a choice,” Jasper muttered, wiping his eyes, “So what’s first?”
Lingzhi cracked a grin, and it immediately caused Jasper to tense up slightly. It almost seemed like there was a hidden sadism of some kind in the smile, and Jasper was not looking forward to his answer as a result.
“I’ve marked a specific tree with the current date. To be precise, the tree says, ‘8-13’. I want you to find it as fast as possible.”
“What?” Jasper responded in disbelief, “How am I supposed to find a carving on a tree in the dark like this.”
“That’s for you to figure out. I’ll be keeping track of how long you take out there, so do try and hurry. If you take too long, you may end up missing breakfast this morning.”
Jasper’s eyes widened slightly. It was only the first day, and he was already being threatened with harsh penalties for failure. He wasn’t sure how long ‘too long’ was, but if he wanted to finish in time he had to hurry, which meant he would need to hit the ground running.
“Okay, Master,” Jasper reluctantly agreed, “I’ll do it.”
Once they got outside, Lingzhi had one other piece of advice for Jasper.
“By the way, I don’t want you going too far,” he advised, “So I’ll tell you that the tree you’re looking for is within fifty meters of the house, in no particular direction.”
Jasper nodded, mentally calculating what fifty meters roughly was. He guessed it was between one hundred and two hundred feet, meaning that was likely where he needed to search. He looked back at Lingzhi one more time and began running into the forest, using the limited light from the moon to avoid running into any trees that might be in the way. Of course, it didn’t take him long to make his first mistake. As he was running, he felt a sense of déjà vu as his right foot ran right into an exposed root. While this one didn’t hook around his foot like the previous one, it still took his feet out from under him, leaving him on the ground.
Nursing his leg as he stood back up, he looked around for the cabin, before seeing a light in the distance. Based on how far he had run, and how small the light was, he guessed that he was around the limit of the boundary that his master had set. With that in mind, he began to search for the message.
However, he immediately ran into another problem: it was completely dark. He could barely see the outlines of the trees in front of him, let alone the trunks where the carving was. In this environment, how was he supposed to find what he was looking for?
He continued to struggle with this exact problem for over fifteen minutes. No matter how hard he squinted his eyes, he couldn’t get enough light at this time of day to see anything. However, he stumbled across a potential alternative by complete accident: by putting his hand on the tree, he could feel his way around it for markings.
Unfortunately, this was easier said than done with how large the tree was, and how many trees he needed to check. He needed to feel around the whole thing for a message and confirm that it wasn’t just a natural marking before he could claim success.
Thus, the rest of the morning was spent searching tree after tree for Lingzhi’s carving, and before he knew it the sun was beginning to creep over the horizon. Before he could get any ideas about using it to aid his search, Lingzhi made his way over to him.
“Sorry, Jasper, time’s up.”
The boy’s shoulders fell, his eyes traveling toward the ground. Only one exercise in and he had already failed. How did he plan to finish the training if he couldn’t finish what was likely the easiest exercise?
“I’m sorry,” Jasper murmured, “I couldn’t finish it.”
“You don’t need to apologize,” Lingzhi reassured, “That said, a deal’s a deal. No breakfast this morning.”
Jasper nodded sullenly. He was expecting this, but he knew it would be difficult continuing without food.
“Now, the second exercise,” Lingzhi continued, “I want you to take my hunting bow and go catch us some lunch. If you succeed, we will both get to eat lunch. If not, then we will both go hungry.”
“All right,” Jasper agreed.
After that, Lingzhi brought out the bow and some arrows. The weapon was smaller than the ones Jasper had messed around with a few times in his youth, and he was confident he would be able to use it. However, things were rarely that simple, and he quickly found himself having trouble.
After traveling into the forest, Jasper quickly found a rabbit that he figured would make a good lunch for himself. Upon seeing it, he immediately nocked one of the arrows he had been given in the bow and fired it.
Unfortunately, the arrow sailed past the rabbit by several feet, and startled it into running away. Jasper clicked his tongue in frustration and retrieved the arrow. He wasn’t too broken up, as he assumed he would get more chances to find game, but after the rabbit fled, Jasper found it rather difficult to find anything. There weren’t a large variety of wild animals in the area immediately surrounding the cabin, and Lingzhi had warned that outside the proximity of his home there were a large variety of dangerous beasts that would be difficult to deal with at this point.
It was almost an hour before Jasper had another chance. An animal that looked like a genetically modified deer was walking through the forest and had clearly just gotten to the territory. Jasper hid behind a tree, attempting to come up with a plan to take down the beast. He knew that the bow was the only chance he had at killing it, but his aim was hardly accurate as demonstrated by the rabbit incident. He prepared another arrow, ready to attack. He took a little more time to aim, knowing the deer would be easier to hit than the rabbit in general, and fired.
As the arrow was traveling, the deer noticed him and began to run. However, the arrow managed to hit it in the leg, and Jasper wasn’t going to waste that chance. He ran up, nocked another arrow, and let it go. This one found its mark in the back, and the deer was down for good.
As the adrenaline began to wear off, Jasper couldn’t help but collapse to the ground, completely spent. He had been up for hours at this point, ran around looking for a mark, and hunted a deer, and it wasn’t even lunchtime yet. After a few minutes to regain his strength, he made his way to his master to inform him of the kill.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Lingzhi seemed impressed.
“Nice work,” Lingzhi praised, “I wasn’t sure you would succeed, considering this is your first time hunting.”
“How did you know?” Jasper asked, surprised.
“I could tell by your form on the first shot that you weren’t particularly used to it, and just guessed from there.”
The two of them walked back to the cabin, where Lingzhi surprised Jasper with the next activity. Rather than stop him and give him some kind of task, he simply gave Jasper a wooden stick while he took one himself.
“We’re going to duel with these,” Lingzhi explained.
“Wait, what?” Jasper gasped, “I’m exhausted! Shouldn’t we eat first?”
Lingzhi shook his head.
“This is as good a time as any to gauge your skills and hone them.”
Jasper gulped, then held the stick forward like a sword. Lingzhi took a stance with his stick, only unlike Jasper, Lingzhi was wielding it with a single hand rather than both. Then, he moved in and began to swing at Jasper from below. Jasper moved his weapon to meet Lingzhi’s, but no contact came. Instead, Lingzhi’s arm moved upwards, drawing his stick into a vertical position, before coming down on top of Jasper.
Before the stick made contact with Jasper’s head, Lingzhi slowed it down so as not to harm the boy. Despite that, the firm wood left a slight pain in Jasper’s skull upon contact.
“Ow,” Jasper moaned, rubbing his head.
“Do you see what I just did?” Lingzhi asked.
“What do you mean?” Jasper replied, “I saw you change the direction of your swing, but that doesn’t seem so hard.”
Lingzhi shook his head.
“You’re not thinking correctly,” Lingzhi explained, “Swordplay, in essence, is less about what technique I use and more when and why I use the technique I do. What I just did was trick you into thinking I would attack low, then when I saw you defend low, I instead smoothly transitioned into an overhead slash.”
“When and why? Isn’t that too advanced for someone who doesn’t even know how to hold a sword?”
“Jasper, you have it completely backwards. You can only truly develop your stance when you know why you are positioning yourself the way you are.”
Jasper scratched his head. This wasn’t making any sense.
“Do you think you can explain in a bit more detail?”
“I have a better idea,” Lingzhi proposed, “We’ll keep dueling, but I want you to watch what I do, and think through why I do it. You don’t need to imitate me or anything, just do what you need to do to try and hit me, and try to analyze my response.”
“That’s asking a lot, Master,” Jasper protested, “Do you think I can really do all of that at once?”
“Just do what you can,” Lingzhi assured, “This is why you’re training.”
Defeated, Jasper held up his sword, ready to continue. Lingzhi reentered his stance from before, but this time he didn’t approach Jasper.
“Aren’t you going to attack?” Jasper asked.
The old man smiled.
“I’ll let you have the first blow,” he offered.
As if responding to the challenge, Jasper raised his stick high above his head and brought it down. Lingzhi promptly raised his stick above his head and smoothly parried the blow, leaving Jasper off-balance. Seeing Lingzhi’s mock sword coming toward his head, he immediately attempted to duck. However, the momentum from his weapon coupled with the downward movement of Jasper’s body caused him to topple over. He felt a force pressing into his back, and knew he had lost.
“Do you see what I just did?” Lingzhi repeated, his weapon retreating.
Jasper stood up and began contemplating the interaction. It went so fast that it was hard to tell what exactly happened, but it seemed like Lingzhi blocked his sword, and his attempt to dodge the counterattack caused him to fall over. He explained his thoughts to Lingzhi, who shook his head.
“That’s not bad, but there’s a bit more that you missed,” he explained, “You telegraphed that swing of yours, so I knew exactly how to counter it. Also, I wanted you to fall down, not get hit by that feint.”
“Feint? What do you mean?”
“I wasn’t attempting to hit you with the stab to your head,” he explained, “I didn’t have a good angle for a killing blow after I parried, due to your momentum. I figured I would take advantage of your inexperience and spook you into doing something that would give me a decisive advantage, rather than hurt you but allow you the chance to regroup.”
“So what you’re saying,” Jasper summarized, “is that you started off defensively, then took advantage of a bad decision I made?”
“Precisely,” Lingzhi affirmed, “That’s how I used to fight, and that’s the approach I took against you.”
“Why did you choose to fight like that?” Jasper wondered, “Isn’t the goal to defeat your opponent?”
“Why don’t I explain over lunch?” Lingzhi proposed, “It may take a little while.”
The two of them proceeded to walk toward Lingzhi’s fire pit to begin cooking.
“I’ll handle the cooking today,” Lingzhi offered, “But by the time you’re done here you’ll know how to cook on your own.”
Jasper nodded and watched Lingzhi light the fire pit and roast the meat. After ten minutes or so, he put the fire out.
“While we wait for our food to cool, I can explain how I used to approach battles,” Lingzhi began.
Jasper nodded, curious.
“When in battle, you have one objective above all else. Can you tell me what it is?”
“Win, right?” Jasper said as if it was obvious.
Lingzhi shook his head in denial.
“Nope. It’s staying alive.”
“What do you mean?” Jasper asked, befuddled, “You die if you lose, right? So, you have to win.”
“You’re making one fundamental mistake, Jasper. Winning and losing may be mutually exclusive, but that doesn’t make them the only options. Thus, the goal should not be to win, which always has a chance of failure, but to not lose. The odds of losing go up the more you focus on winning, as you’re more likely to make mistakes that could cost you your life when looking for a decisive victory.”
Jasper nodded slowly.
“You know,” Lingzhi continued, “Being a member of the Royal Guard, I saw many friends die. I was often heralded as one of the most skilled knights in the Guard, but that came as much from my record of survival as my record of victory. The fact was, even in the worst losses for Aurem, I came back alive. I was always one of the ones who escaped to fight another day. And thus, my victories were all the more consequential. After all, a victory following the survival of a loss needs to be the justification for surviving at all.”
“You’re talking about survivor’s guilt, right?” Jasper confirmed.
Lingzhi nodded.
“That’s a good way to put it. It’s easy to feel like you shouldn’t have survived when your comrades die. The way I kept myself going was to tell myself that the win I got next time would not have occurred had I died in battle. That my future successes were simply the fruit borne from the sacrifices of my colleagues. Maybe that’s why I managed to avoid the worst of the guilt.”
“And you managed to win quite often anyway, right?”
“Yes,” Lingzhi affirmed, “Not every defeat was followed by a victory, of course, but we ended up winning the war in the end. I like to think all the times I survived, even at the expense of others, led up to that moment.”
“This war you’re talking about,” Jasper noted, “That’s the Golden War you mentioned earlier, right?”
“Correct,” Lingzhi said, “The Golden War was a war to protect the independence of the Kingdom of Aurem from the northern Natril Empire, which covers territory across the continent as a whole, from the northern side of the Golden Peaks all the way to the mostly unknown elven regions to the far north.”
“Independence? So, this Natril Empire was attempting to conquer the Kingdom of Aurem?”
“Apparently. This was second-hand information, of course, but the Empire seems to have ambitions for the entirety of Natril, hence sharing the name with the continent. Thankfully for us, the only land route between here and the Empire is a thin stretch of land between the eastern edge of the Golden Peaks and the Eastern Aurumian coastline. By the way, that gap isn’t particularly far; it’s just a week’s walk up the coast to the north. Since the Empire doesn’t have a whole lot of seaports due to its geographical location, we were able to pinch off their land forces at the pass while crippling their naval battalion at the same time.”
“I see,” Jasper claimed.
In reality, he was having quite a bit of trouble following along. He wasn’t expecting to get a history lesson on his first day of training, and it seemed like there were a lot of moving parts to keep track of, from the current civil war between the existing Kingdom and Argentis, to the territorial ambitions of the northern Empire. He had the distinct feeling that it would take a little longer than he expected to truly understand what was going on around here.
Still, any information was better than no information when it came to saving the twins. If he could gain an understanding of the area and the climate, it could very well help him create a plan of attack in the future.
“In reality,” Jasper admitted, “This is going to take a lot of time to sink in. After all, I’m probably from some alternate dimension, and so none of these names are familiar to me. I have to start from the ground up if I want to learn anything about where I’ve come.”
“Well, no one said it was going to be easy,” Lingzhi agreed, “But we have quite a bit of time, so we can take it as slow as you need.”
“Let’s just hope it’s not too slow,” Jasper mumbled to himself.
By now, the food had cooled and the two had begun to eat. No more words were exchanged until they were finished, as Jasper was far too hungry to think about anything other than sustenance. After several minutes, Lingzhi finally stood up.
“Okay. Time to get back to work.”
Jasper looked at his lunch and thought for a second. Had he eaten enough to be satisfied? Would it be enough energy to continue with the harsh regimen that Lingzhi was putting him through?
“You shouldn’t eat too much, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Lingzhi instructed, “I think that’s been enough. Let’s get back to training.”
Jasper put his food down and stood up, ready to continue what was likely going to go down as one of the longest days of his life.